SURVIVAL UNDER DURESS: ANARCHIST CRITIQUE OF THINNER THAN SKIN

Abstract

Purpose of the study: This study used an Anarchist framework to prove that Thinner than Skin by Uzma Aslam Khan explores the causes of the peripheral communities' shared precariousness and their fight to sustain and conserve life in a world encroached upon by civilization. Methodology: Using Anarchist's (Manicardi, 2012; Zerzan, 2006, Bookchin, 2005) framework that believes that this materialistic worldview can be refuted only by unveiling the oppressive conditions of our modern existence, looking for remedy of people's unbearable misery is tantamount to finding a cure for these miseries. Further, the research is qualitative and analytical in nature, using close textual analysis. Main Findings: The paper finds that Khan highlights the precarious condition of peripheral communities residing in the Northern region of Pakistan. The analysis has proved that Khan's fiction, particularly her novel Thinner than Skin expresses her anarchist vision and shows her detest for modern civilization which being steeped in anthropocentric ideology subjects all forms of life to extinction Applications of the study: The paper helps to identify in future studies that how perpherial people are kept oppressed and marginalized, and how they will be given agentic position to represent themesevels rather they are represented. Novelty/Originality of the study: The study is about nomadic tribes, residing in the womb of Himalayan ranges are subjected to a number of problems including natural disasters such as floods and climatic shifts which causes glacial melt and threatens to drown the adjacent areas in a few decades only to satiate big businesses' thirst for profit. The state fails miserably to defend its citizens from political and economic turmoil because the state serves as handmaiden to western countries and the business interests of their business tycoons.